Mefou Park (french: Parc de la Méfou), also known as Mefou Wildlife Sanctuary and Mfou Reserve, is a primate sanctuary in the

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

area Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape A shape or figure is a graphics, graphical representation of an obje ...

Mfou Mfou is a town in the south part of Cameroon. It is not far east of the capital, Yaoundé. It is a rural area and the activities of the inhabitants are basically subsistence agriculture. Population In the 2005 census, the commune had 37,209 inh ...

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

. Within it, Mefou Primate Park is used as a shelter for

primate Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

s that are native to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

: the

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...

chimpanzee The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...

s and

gorillas Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...

History

Ape Action Africa Ape Action Africa is a non-profit NGO founded in 1996 dedicated to the conservation of endangered gorillas and chimpanzees, threatened by the bushmeat trade in Central and West Africa. Ape Action Africa manages the rescue and rehabilitation of Gr ...

established the sanctuary to house primates which were housed at the

Mvog-Betsi Zoo The Mvog-Betsi Zoo is a botanical and zoological park located in Yaoundé, Cameroon. It is administered by the country's Ministry of Forestry and Fauna (MINFOF) (formerly the Ministry of Environments and Forests (MINEF)), and there is a wide range ...

Yaoundé Yaoundé (; , ) is the capital of Cameroon and, with a population of more than 2.8 million, the second-largest city in the country after the port city Douala. It lies in the Centre Region of the nation at an elevation of about 750 metres (2,50 ...

. Eventually, it would act to protect primates that were affected by illegal pet and

bushmeat Bushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are hunted for human consumption, most often referring to the meat of game in Africa. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity for inhabitants of humid tropi ...

trades in the country. In 2010, the sanctuary's director, Colonel Avi Sivan, was killed in a

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

crash.

Gallery

File:Mandril in the Reserve sanctuary Mefou.jpg, Mandril File:Mandrill adulte du sanctuaire de la Mefou.jpg, Adult Mandril File:Gorille adulte avec dos argenté du sanctuaire de la Mefou.jpg, Adult gorilla with silverback File:Femelle gorille dans la reserve de la Mefou.jpg, Female gorilla File:Singe dans le Park de la Mefou2.jpg, Entrance to the park File:Singe dans le Park de la Mefou7.jpg, Trees at the park File:Chimpanzé in Primate Reserve sanctuary Mefou.jpg, Confined Chimpanzees at Mefou File:Femelle gorille adulte dans la reserve de la Mefou.jpg, Adult female Gorilla

References

External links

Mefou Primate Sanctuary

Mefou National Park, Yaounde, Cameroon: Primate Park
(

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

)
Cameroon Wildlife Sanctuary and Wildlife Refuge: Mefou and Ape Action Africa

Mefou National Park Gorilla

Parc de la Méfou Cameroun
(in the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

) National parks of Cameroon Centre Region (Cameroon) {{CentreRegionCM-geo-stub

History

Gallery

See also

References

Further reading

External links